A new play, performed by Ubuntu Theatre Project. At Bulmba-ja Arts Centre June 20th and 21st. 

For some, identity is flexible. For others, it’s everything.

When Kabili steps into an Australian high school for the first time, he’s greeted not with curiosity, but a bet—how long before he “loses his Africanness”? 

Welcome to Resist The Switch, a bold, funny, and unflinching new theatre work that peels back the layers of identity, migration, and belonging. As a group of African-Australian teens prepare for school camp, tensions bubble beneath the surface. Between code-switching and culture clashes, TikTok and traditional fire stories, they wrestle with the unspoken rules of survival in a country that’s still learning how to see them.

Told through dynamic ensemble performance, ancestral folktales, and razor-sharp dialogue, Resist The Switch is more than a coming-of-age story—it’s a cultural awakening.

What happens when fitting in means forgetting who you are? This is theatre that dares to ask: what parts of yourself are you willing to give up to be accepted? And what might happen if you choose to resist?

What is it Ubuntu Theatre Project?

Ubuntu Theatre Project, led by JUTE Theatre Company in partnership with Centacare FNQ and Cairns African Association, is an extension of the 2022 pilot program ‘Breaking Ground’. The project aims to establish a culturally strong and creatively independent theatre company led by and for refugees and migrants.

It focuses on teaching transferrable skills through an arts-based model rooted in Ubuntu philosophy for young people aged 15-26 from African, refugee, and migrant backgrounds Ubuntu is an indigenous African Philosophy. The word ‘Ubuntu’ is derived from, ‘Umuntu’ meaning, a human being, from the southern African Nguni languages (isiZulu/isiXhosa/isiNdbele). Deeply rooted in the value of collectivism, which stresses the importance of community as opposed to individualism, which focuses on the person on an individual level, it gave rise to the Zulu maxim of ‘Umuntu ungumuntu ngabantu’, meaning, my being is tied to your being, or as widely interpreted today, I am because you are.